Grant Morrison's run on Action Comics featured an issue about a Multiverse version of Superman who started off as a creation of a group of young comic creators, only to end up being co-opted by a big corporation who screwed over the writers. The story has some pretty obvious similarities to that of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who created Superman and whose relatives are involved in a bitter legal dispute with DC Comics over the profits gained from the character. It is also briefly mentioned that the corporation had tried to make their Superman more appealing to a modern audience by making him Darker and Edgier, which has been a common complaint about the New 52 Superman and the Man of Steel movie. Morrison briefly mentions a Lighter and Softer version of Superman from another Earth called "Optiman" who failed to stop the rampaging antihero version mentioned above. As Morrison was making fun of the Darker and Edgier stance towards Superman, they were also mocking the idea that a "cutesy-pie" Superman is the only alternative to a darker Superman.
An early example of DC and Marvel taking shots at one another occurred in a Legion of Super-Heroes story from Adventure Comics #350 back in 1966. After transforming into a giant spider in order to web up a monster, Chameleon Boy had this to say:
Chameleon Boy: In case a certainweb-headed character thinks I'm stealing his thunder, I'd like to remind him that I was changing to all sorts of weird shapes long before he walked up his first wall!
Ambush Bug: One comic involved Ambush Bug investigating the disappearances of various supporting cast members of DC heroes, such as Wonder Tot, Itsy and Mopee. In Mopee's panel he claims responsibility for various events, including several at Marvel. Then, he says, he did something really nasty... he was the one who made Jim Shooter's parents meet for the first time! (Jim Shooter was already infamous in the industry for his draconic policies as editor-in-chief of Marvel, and his former employers at DC didn't like him much either.)
Animal Man thinks to himself while experimenting with the abilities of a spider: "Of course I wouldn't want only spider powers... that'd make me a third-rate super-hero."
Mark Millar's first arc took this to a ridiculous extreme by fighting (and utterly destroying) satirical versions of the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, S.H.I.E.L.D., and the X-Men and the main villain being Jack Kirby; he's specifically described as "the guy who would've created all your favorite comic books" if he hadn't been hired by the US government. The series has a lot of Author Appeal, and they're not subtle about it either. The authors explained this was a deliberate poke at traditional superheroes who they felt embodied and maintained the status quo. He even takes shots at Charles Atlas bodybuilding ads. Also;
Hawksmoor: (to Bill Clinton) We're not some comic book super-team who participate in pointless fights with pointless super-criminals every month to preserve the status quo.
Speaking of Clinton, Millar hated him, and so his run on the series and the Jenny Sparks mini-series had several jabs against him. One of the issues of the mini-series even goes so far as to implicitly compare Clinton to Adolf Hitler.
Ironically, despite the creator of "What's So Funny" intending for "The Elite" to basically be a one/two-shot deal, a second version of the Elite appeared... and turned out to be pulling a Batman Gambit to pretend to be the second coming of the original Elite in order to make humanity pull together for one major effort needed to waive off Gaia's Vengeance... a smackdown that Gaea herself was planning to dish out. They subsequently became the short-lived Justice League Elite, in essence the black ops branch of the Justice League family.
Justice League even had an episode that showed what would happen if the titular heroes, which The Authority is patterned loosely after, were to suddenly decide that they knew better than everyone else. It's not clear if it was a deliberate Take That! or just exploring the concept of the League becoming evil, but it's often regarded as one of the show's best-written episodes.
Also in the series, during Warren Ellis' last story, is the Authority attempting to kill God. Ellis is a staunch atheist.
Phil Noto's unused cover for Batgirl #3 shows Stephanie Brown looking over concepts for potential Batgirl costumes. As an in-joke, the Batgirl design sported by Alicia Silverstone in Batman & Robin can be seen crossed out with the words "definitely not" scrawled over it.
In Gail Simone's Batgirl run, the Ventriloquist enters a talent show that's a clear parody of American Idol. The villainess proceeds to violently kill the obvious Simon Cowell clone, and leaves the Paula Abdul wannabe Bound and Gagged between two rotting corpses. Only the Randy Jackson analogue escapes unscathed.
Batman Incorporated features tons of take thats against DC Comics for the DC Universe reboot as far as Morrison openly ignoring the reboot and outright referring to things (the existence of the Outsiders, the opening arc of Morrison's JLA (1997) run and references to the original Justice League International era JLA, which Metamorpho was a member of, Batwing's original origin, Talia being part of the Secret Society of Super-Villains and the reveal that Talia was part of Alexander Luthor's scheme to bring back the Multiverse, Jason Todd and his partnership with Scarlet, and the entire Final Crisis/Black Glove storyline) that DC explicitly erased from canon.
The series takes place in a version of the Batman Film Series and included a middle finger to Burnside from Batgirl (2011). In Batgirl, Burnside was a trendy part of Gotham, whereas Batman '89 acts as a sequel to Batman Returns that ignores Joel Schumacheradditions tothe series and in keeping with the films' heyday being in the '90s, presents Burnside as one of the poorer sections of Gotham with a predominantly Black community, suggesting that gentrification is why Burnside was the way it is in the main DCU.
When Drake finds the Batcave, Bruce makes a joke that references how infamously crappy he treated Dick Grayson in All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder (keeping Dick a prisoner and forcing him to eat rats).
The title for the first issue in the Convergence: Titans is "Try For Justice", and its plot seems to aim to fix problems that occurred in the series.
DC Universe: Rebirth #1, the kickoff for the DC Rebirth event, takes a dig a comic writers who do unironic Darker and Edgier superheroes by revealing that Dr. Manhattan of Watchmen is the cause of the New 52, essentially saying "If you're using Watchmen as a guide to writing mainstream superhero comics, you've missed the point entirely". The basic premise could be seen as a Take That at the New 52 as a whole, with Wally West talking about how the new continuity robbed its heroes of their history and legacy. This view was enforced by Geoff Johns, the writer of the Rebirth one-shot, giving an interview where he claimed that the New 52 rendered certain characters unrecognizable.note Such as Wally himself, to the point that the New 52 version was retconned to be a different person with the same name. And of course the revelation of the issue is that the New 52 is a perversion of the previous continuity created by a madman with the power of a god.
Hanna-Barbera wanted to use Black Lightning in Superfriends but when they realized it would cost extra as they would have to pay his creator Tony Isabella as well, they created his Expy Black Vulcan instead. In response, the last issue of Isabella's Black Lightning series has the titular character fight an Evil Knockoff of himself created by a villainess named Barbara Hannah.
Grant Morrison's mini-series DC One Million begins with Plastic Man doing a Take That! at DC's other stretchable superhero Elongated Man: "I could never figure out why the League kept choosing Elongated Man over me. Don't get me wrong, nice guy, nice wife, but hey! Someone left the stable door open and his charisma just bolted I guess!"
In Alex Ross's Justice, Plastic Man is portrayed as a complete jerk, especially to Ralph (Elongated Man)'s face. Ralph comes off as the bigger man when he doesn't retaliate.
An episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold features a similar jab, with Plastic Man dismissing Elongated Man as a "D-list doppleganger".
There was the episode of Justice League Unlimited that had Elongated Man whining about how Plastic Man is more popular than him despite the fact that he is a far more competent hero than Plas.
Dark Nights: Death Metal, sequel event of the above, provides many Take Thats towards Dan DiDio, DC's much-hated former editor and co-publisher from 2002-2020, who was let go from the company during Death Metal's development. Perpetua and the Batman-Who-Laughs are portrayed as having maliciously darkened the DC multiverse (Dan DiDio was known for forcing writers to make the DCU Darker and Edgier), leading to their dialogue quoting and paraphrasing DiDio's comments, and having Wonder Woman and others comment negatively about the malicious forces that ruined the multiverse. DiDio's personal Creator's Pest, Wally West, is one of the main characters of the event, which sees him get some much needed support, being absolved of the crimes DiDio had him commit, and end with him once again becoming The Flash, which also has him refute the Batman-Who-Laughs as he quotes DiDio's apparent claim "A Flash dies in every Crisis" that was used to justify Wally's mistreatment. The event ends with a lead in to DC Infinite Frontier, which sees the return of characters and continuity that DiDio tried to erase as well as a return to Lighter and Softer storytelling, which is portrayed in-universe as an end to an Audience-Alienating Era.
There's a scene in The Lazarus Contract where a H.I.V.E. scientist says that physicists being able to film an electron leaving an atom almost makes up for J. J. Abrams' Star Trek (2009) reboot.
Christopher Priest has stated that he dislikes the whimsical tone many modern superheroine books have, specifically singling out practices like having characters take selfies during battle. One of the things Deathstroke tells the members of Defiance, his new team of teen superheroes in Deathstroke (Rebirth), is "We don't pose for selfies."
In a backup story for issue #545, a bystander calls Green Arrow "Hawkeye" dismissively. In the following panels Ollie thinks to himself how, while he can't place the name, something about it really irks him.
Earth-Prime: Superman & Lois has a scene where a young Clark Kent uses his superpowers in public to save a kid who is about to be run over by a bus. After Clark apologizes to his dad for this, Pa Kent merely responds by saying "What were you supposed to do, Clark? Just let him get hit?" The entire exchange is a clear jab at the infamously controversial scene in Man of Steel where Clark's dad admonished him for saving a bus full of children from drowning.
Heat Wave: This isn't for Kid Flash. Weather Wizard: This isn't for my son. Captain Cold: No. This is for one $%@#$@-up year.
A precursor to Superboy-Prime appears in The Flash storyline "Return of Barry Allen," Mark Waid's response to fans asking him to bring back Barry. He brings back Barry all right—except it's really the young Eobard Thawne, future Professor Zoom, retconned into a fanboy so obsessive he gets plastic surgery to look exactly like Barry Allen. When various psychological shocks such as discovering he goes on to be a villain and be killed by his former idol leave him convincing himself he is Barry, he is furious to discover that people grew to think of Wally West as the Flash in the years after Barry died, and he eventually leaves Wally in a deathtrap for "stealing his name."
Issue #2 of The Green Lantern: The Blackstars features another series of meta-jabs from Grant Morrison at much of the rest of the DC Universe. These observations include;
The way Batman's villains have abandoned clever, entertaining crimes in favor of repeated attempts to attack him on a personal level (referencing the City of Bane storyline from Tom King's Batman (Tom King) run, as well as the various other times this plot point has been rehashed in recent years),
Wonder Woman having become a sword-swinging Blood Knight who favors violence and aggression over love and compassion (a dig at the New 52 reboot of the character, especially as she was characterized by Geoff Johns)
The Justice League's encounters with beings from "The Depressoverse" (an allusion to the Dark Multiverse from Scott Snyder's various books, such as Dark Nights: Metal and Justice League)
An admission that the heroes of the DC Universe have been "struggling to change with the times" (a nod to DC's repeated attempts to revamp and reimagine its heroes to appeal to modern audiences, usually with mixed results). Being a good sport, Morrison also threw in a line about the number of times Batman has been replaced, a slam on their own Batman and Robin run.
One towards the Injustice franchise when the Blackstars takeover the Earth and bring about global peace and prosperity. With the remaining resistance of Batman, Lex Luthor, Catwoman, and others being described as reactionary elites afraid of their irrelevance in the face of money and social classes now being meaningless.
In the last issue of Stephanie Phillips' run on Harley Quinn, Harley talks about how rare good endings really are, and alludes to "A show [she] can't mention or else [she'll] get a call from legal" that had a notoriously terrible finale. Reading between the lines, Harley seems to be taking a shot at the infamous final episode of Game of Thrones.note For reference, both Harley Quinn and Game of Thrones are Warner Bros. properties, hence the comment about being unable to criticize the show without WB's legal department getting involved.
One of the short stories in the Harley Quinn: The Real Sidekicks of New Gotham Special is a parody of Three Jokers about The Joker encountering his old college buddy, who is also called Joker. Near the end of the story, it's revealed that their friend group once included a third Joker modeled after Jared Leto's portrayal of the character from Suicide Squad (2016) (complete with a shirtless costume and a "Twisted" forehead tattoo), which prompts this exchange:
Joker #2: Joker would be disappointed if he saw us now.
Joker #1: Yeah... Thank God that asshole's dead.
Hellblazer: Rise and Fall doesn't pull its punches portraying rich people as fat, selfish monsters who would literally sell everything they own if it meant not having to actually face the consequences of their actions, all the while having the resources to help people and just choosing not to.
Aisha: Imagine being able to do this and just... not doing it? John: Billionaires are the most worthless people on the planet.
Buck Wild from Icon was both a Take That! and an Affectionate Parody of the early superheroes of the Blaxploitation years. Black Lightning, The Falcon, Black Goliath, and Luke Cage are all explicitly parodied, and Icon states that Buck's antics were often highly embarrassing. However, he also says that despite being a caricature, Buck is deserving of respect, since he paved the way for the less-offensive black superheroes of today.
As a parody comic, The Inferior Five had a few moments of this:
Issue #7 had a scene where the real Thor from Norse mythology was mortified after the Five shaved his trademark beard and dyed his red hair blond, causing him to resemble his Marvel counterpart. The same issue also had an appearance from a parody of Namor the Sub-Mariner called "Nabob the Sub-Moron", complete with a mangling of Namor's patented "Imperius Rex!" Battle Cry.
Issue #10 brough back Nabob and introduced "Cobweb Kid" and "The Kookie Quartet," all of whom ended up thoroughly humiliated by the end of the story.
One issue of Injustice: Gods Among Us has been seen as a major Take That towards the changes done to Superman. The issue, showing a young man who wishes for the Superman of old, where he'd help kids and shame criminals into giving up, could be taken as a Take That towards Man of Steel, New 52 or how the prequel comic has gone on.
The trade paperback collection for the DC event Invasion! had the tagline "Secret No More!", a jab at Marvel's Secret Invasion. *Both storylines were alien invasion stories, but while Secret Invasion dropped the ball on any long-term effects, Invasion! didn't, the biggest one being the revelation of the meta-gene.
In the Joker / Mask crossover, the Joker briefly transforms into a new futuristic form he dubs "Joker Beyond", which he quickly dismisses as being "a little too Saturday morning".
James Robinson's final issue of the 2006-2011 Justice League series has a number of potshots directed at the New 52 reboot that resulted in the title's cancellation, including the favoritism shown towards Batwing over a number of already-established African-based heroes, Dick Grayson's return to the Nightwing identity and Donna Troy's apparent lack of appearance in the reboot. It also took shots at the Justice League fans who criticized Robinson's run, with Grayson stating that he didn't care whether or not his iteration of the League would be remembered fondly by the public, and that he and his team did their best despite what the detractors said. How subtle.
In Justice League Incarnate, Darkseid journeys to Earth 8, DC's equivalent of the Marvel universe, and encounters "Tartarus"; a blatant Expy of Thanos, who is himself a Darkseid ripoff. Not only does Darkseid quickly and easily kill him, but calls him "the echo of a whisper of my weakest moment".
The New 52 volume seemingly got in a dig at Blue Beetle Jaime Reyes (who some JLI fans don't like) when the people recruiting the new JLI reacted negatively when Jaime was suggested as a potential member of the team, arguing he was too inexperienced. In the final issue of the series, Jaime did join the team, which caused Guy Gardner to quit on the spot when Jaime asked if Superman and Wonder Woman were also part of the group.
The original Justice League International volume from the 80s took a lighthearted jab at The Avengers in its eleventh issue. After Captain Atom yells out "Justice League assemble!" during a fight, a bemused Martian Manhunter says the Justice League doesn't need a Battle Cry. Captain Atom then gets snapped at again when he refers to the team as "The Mighty Justice League" (a play on "The Mighty Avengers") a short time later.
Justice League Quarterly #16 was a series of in-universe comic books featuring General Glory, DC's then-current Captain Ersatz Captain America. For the most part these were Affectionate Parodies of fifties monster comics (as "General Glory's Really Scary Stories", a parody of Captain America's Weird Tales), Silver Age superheroes (and more Self-Deprecation on DC's Silver Age than Cap's return at Marvel) and even Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (as "Return on a Dark Night"). The final story, however, is "The Power ... And The Platitude!" by Indulgence Comics in which the "Wildbloods" free an insane General Glory and Ernie from suspended animation in a vicious parody of Image Comics in general and Youngblood (Image Comics) freeing John Prophet in particular. In the Framing Story, the real Glory calls it "downright pointless", and the guy he's showing the comics to says "General Glory should stand for something. He shouldn't be involved in meaningless violence for its own sake."
Subversion: this page from JSA created some backlash, because it was seen as a Take That, Critics! against everybody who criticized oversexualised costumes for superheroines, but this response from Jen Van Meter explains it was never intended to be take that.
The cover◊ for JSA Classified #3 took a shot at the industry's over-dependence on big events in the 2000s as Power Girl and Huntress couldn't remember which event they were in at the time.
Power Girl: So is this a Villians United thing or an OMAC thing?
Mark Waid's Kingdom Come series is essentially a middle finger to the 90's era of comics. The irresponsible hero Magog (who causes the death of thousands of civilians) is an obvious parody of the X-Men character Cable, a popular character during that time period. Additionally, many of the DC heroes introduced in the 90's such as Kyle Rayner (who the artist Alex Ross has gone on record as saying he hates), Bart Allen (who was co-created by Waid) and Tim Drake were completely ignored, while others like Kon-El appeared in the background as part of the Legion of Super-Heroes in the comic. Amusingly, Ross also designed Magog as a jab at the notorious Rob Liefeld, by modeling Magog after two characters that he designed: Cable and Shatterstar. Magog resembles Cable with a version of Shatterstar's helmet. Ironically, since Waid wrote Magog as a three dimensional character who was an apologetic Well-Intentioned Extremist who learned from his mistake, he ended up being a favorite character of the creators.
Back during the 90s, fans had clamored for Batman to be Darker and Edgier akin to The Punisher. To that end, they used Knightfall to phase Bruce Wayne out in favor of Anti-Hero SubstituteJean-Paul Valley, who proceeds to tear through villainy in a Punisher-like style, yet never coming close to taking a life before, finally, culminating with him finally taking a life and Bruce Wayne coming back to kick his ass and take back his name. Interesting, he's told by four different people, including Superman and The Joker that he's not the real Batman. At one point, Commissioner Gordon asks Robin when the real Batman will be returning, referring to AzBats as "that punk" in Batman's costume.
A bunch of defectors from Marvel (Byrne included), snuck in an epic Take That! into the DC series Legends, where Guy Gardner beat the crap out of Sunspot, a transparent Expy of Marvel's Star Brand (the over-hyped headlining book of Marvel's New Universe which spectacularly failed to take off and bore a suspicious resemblance to Marvel Editor Jim Shooter). Guy doesn't even break a sweat, and Sunspot ends the fight by shooting himself in the foot while ranting about why the New Universes he tries to create keep exploding. Viewable here.
The most distinguishing feature of Earth-8, based on Marvel Comics, on the interactive map is that its heroes "fight with each other as much as they fight the bad guys". Notably, the Behemoth (its version of The Hulk) transforms into a raging, giant, blue baby instead of a jade titan when aggravated.
The Gentry appear to be manifestations of the stagnation found in mainstream comics. Intellectron, a one-eyed bat-winged creature, in particular is seen as a parody of DC Comics, representing the company's obsession with Batman, a singular vision, and lack of depth perception.
In Society of Super-Heroes: Conquerors of the Counter-World #1, Abin Sur's fight with Count Sinestro and Parallax, as well as Abin Sur beating both of them on his own, may be criticism at DC dragging out the emotional entity concept in Green Lantern and how Parallax has become a diminished threat in recent stories. As well, the use of Parallax to power the Transmatter Engine for Doc Fate can be a reference to how Parallax himself has been used as a tool rather than an actual villain in his own right in his stories since the advent of the New 52.
Thunderworld #1 feels like a huge shot at how DC has handled the Marvel Family in the last few years, due to the fact that the Billy, Mary, Freddy, and Wizard of Earth-5 are much more wholesome and well-adjusted compared to their main Earth counterparts. There's also the fact that Sivana, who is still a Card-Carrying Villain, is disturbed by an Ax-Crazy counterpart who makes very unsavory comments about what he did to his world's Marvel Family. Said villain feels sadly similar to the villains who've become common in Earth-0's universe.
Thunderworld #1 also comes off as a Take That! to the New 52 as a whole, seeing how its lack of Darker and Edgier elements seems to be what allowed it to repel the Gentry's invasion in the first place. It goes to show that you don't need hyper-realism and grim elements to create a good story, and that the optimism and fun of Pre-New 52 DC still has a place in comics. And, given how well-received Thunderworld has been, it's something that hasn't been lost on the general comic-book readership either. Captain Marvel even lampshades how silly the darker and edgier stories are when it comes down to it, and asks just what's wrong with a happy ending.
Captain Marvel Junior:S.O.S.... They cancelled that book. Captain Marvel: No wonder. What happened to happy endings? "I'll get out and destroy everything..." HA! I don't know about you. But, that sounds to me, like tomorrow's big adventure! (crumples up the Gentry's cursed comic-book, chucks it into the trash, and flies off with Mary and Junior to their next big adventure with smiles on their faces)
Not to mention that when Sivana takes over the Rock of Eternity, and starts plundering the magic from it, he redecorates it to look like a corporate office, complete with cubicles and potted plants. Possibly a comment on how the comics industry has now become one big corporation.
Pax Americana #1 is a not too subtle one to Alan Moore, and how he deconstructed superheroes in a cold mechanical way through the visuals and narrative of Watchmen.
Captain Atom: I had to take a closer look... I thought the pieces would explain the whole. But... It's hard to love the pieces like... like.. I thought I could locate the source of these feelings doctor. Then I realized... What have I done? I just killed Butch. My faithful little dog.
As well as Moore's later attempts at reconstructing the genre through his later work Supreme, and giving a reason as to why Alan Moore or any writer who did Deconstruction stories can never return to anything upbeat and meaningful.
Captain Atom: Except... what if Butch is alive as well as dead? Why not? [another dog similar visually to Butch appears next to the body of the dead dog] Hm. Not the same.
And when discussing the book (which was drawn by Frank Quitely) in an interview, Morrison said it beats the hell out of that series Frank is doing with Mark Millar at Image.
The book "The Just" is a look at the comic book industry's place in the larger pop culture consciousness, in particular to Hollywood and blockbuster movies. In this world, peace has been achieved for years and the children of heroes are superficial mock-ups of their parents, much the same way that some fans argue that movie and TV adaptations lack the depth and heart of the source material. Heroes don't have any real fights anymore, but engage in highly-publicized re-enactments for the populace. They even knock the fans who only vaguely go into comics because it's a popular thing due to films with no deeper appreciation.
Damian: When did Hipsters get into superhero books?
"The Just" also contains a slam on Grant Morrison's own tendency toward metatextual stories. Upon hearing the plot of the comic, a deeply-annoyed Damian Wayne remarks, "So basically they found some post-postmodern way to make superheroes seem interesting. That's never going to happen."
In New Gods, Jack Kirby left some careful hints that the series was a Stealth Sequel to The Mighty Thor, taking place long after Asgard was destroyed during Ragnarok. In one issue, a character finds Thor's helmet in the ruins of Asgard, and remarks that the Asgardians (who are not explicitly named as such) must've destroyed themselves because they were stupid savages obsessed with combat. Note that Kirby left Marvel on very bad terms with Stan Lee and the company in general...
The "bad terms" became extremely obvious with the creation of the low-level villain Funky Flashman in Mister Miracle, who was recognised by just about everyone at the time as a malicious caricature of Lee. (And his sycophantic servant Houseroy as a caricature of then Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas.)
The Outsiders: Around the early New Tens, there was a prolific message board poster known as Herald, who would often complain about DC's current editorial practices. Dan Didio eventually wrote Herald into Outsiders 2009 as an annoying and effeminate fanboy with the real name "Harold Winer," and then proceeded to have him get humiliated by Looker and roughed up by her security detail.
While writing her Poison Ivy mini-series, Amy Chu included a scene where Ivy kills a sleazy coworker who tries to blackmail her into having sex with him. This was a dig at the issue's editor, Eddie Berganza, who had developed a reputation for sexually harassing his female coworkers and employees.
The Sandman, being a Neil Gaiman series, inevitably takes a jab at Freud. In Volume 2, when Rose and Morpheus are flying together through the Dreaming:
Secret Origins v2 #19 recounts how the Guardian got his trademark shield from a costume shop. While in the shop, he sees a replica of Captain America's triangular shield, and decides to see which one is tougher by banging both shields together. Cap's shield is easily wrecked, while the Guardian's remains pristine and undamaged.
A flashback issue starring Will Payton, the previous Starman, begins with Will having an inner monologue about why nobody seems to like him and climaxes with a bad guy giving him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how he has "no edge" in a very obvious case of Writer on Board. For context, Will Payton was very much The Cape but was created right at the beginning of The Dark Age of Comic Books, and never really caught on.
While writing the Star Trek comic for DC, Peter David had to put up with a lot of Executive Meddling from a Paramount employee named Richard Arnold. Among other things, Arnold reneged on certain promises (such as allowing David to use characters from Star Trek: The Animated Series and then changing his mind), and made David get rid of a character named R.J. Blaise. As soon as Arnold was fired, David brought back R.J. and did a story about a warlord named Darrich from the planet Landor ("Darrich" and "Landor" being anagrams of "Richard" and "Arnold"). R.J. revealed that Darrich was difficult to deal with and had a habit of reneging on promises he'd already made, and that she had humiliatingly forced him to sign a peace treaty at gunpoint.
An issue of Supergirl mocked the much-maligned Justice League: The Rise of Arsenal mini-series. The original mini featured a widely-mocked scene where a doped up Arsenal hallucinates that a dead cat is his daughter Lian. An issue of Bizarrogirl featured a Bizzaro version of Arsenal... whose gimmick was a quiver full of dead cats which he used as projectile weapons.
In an issue of the New 52 Superman series, Cat Grant mocks the Daily Planet by claiming that unlike the Planet, the blog she and Clark run isn't held hostage by the whims of lawyers and corporate overlords. This is of course in reference to Marvel being controlled by Disney, which is itself somewhat hypocritical, since DC has technically been owned by a large corporation since the late 1960's.
At the height of the popularity of the Marvel Zombies franchise, there was a Teen Titans issue where Supergirl bluntly stated that zombies were lame.
The first issue of the New 52Teen Titans series opens with Kid Flash accidentally burning down a mansion in Westchester. This was of course written by Scott Lobdell, a writer who had a lengthy tenure on Marvel's X-books before jumping ship and moving to DC.
The New 52 Teen Titans later ended up on the other end of a Take That! in the DC Rebirth relaunch of the title. Turns out Damian has the same opinion of Red Robin's Teen Titans that a lot of the fans did, saying that they epitomized everything wrong with modern teen heroes, and didn't deserve to call themselves a team.
Damian Wayne: Despite his best efforts, over the past few years the Teen Titans have been losers, criminals...a joke.
The Teen Titans Go! comic edition "Stupid Cupid" took a massive, though lighthearted, shot at the shipping community, with Raven mentioning that shipping is rather pointless.
Wonder Woman (1942): The villain Dr. Psycho was drawn to look like a caricature of Goebbels.
Wonder Woman (2006): Tsaritsa temporarily takes on the appearance Diana sported in the late-60s when she lost her powers and learned martial arts to become a spy. Diana simply responds with a punch and that she would never act like that.
Wonder Woman: Odyssey takes a jab at Diana's romantic entanglement with Tom Tresser (Nemesis) whom she was dating for most of Wonder Woman (2006) as the character named Nemesis in this volume is the Big Bad.
There's a jab at the violently misandrist New 52 Amazons, with Diana noting how they're all wrong.
Diana saying that she was only with Superman because it was "easy", which is a common criticism of the New 52 relationship: they're two super strong attractive people, so of course they'd be together! The romantic aspect of their former relationship is later retconned out entirely.
A running joke throughout Young Justice was that Impulse really, really, REALLY hated Hanson, a Boy Band that was popular during the period the comic was published.
When Dwayne McDuffie recycled the old, tossed out idea of superhero Black Power, who has access to his powers in Captain Marvel style — transformation after saying certain word — and from white man turns into black one, he made his white form look like Avengers writer Brian Michael Bendis, and his black form very similar to Luke Cage, Bendis' favorite character. This may have been more of a Shout-Out though.
Prior to McDuffie's death, he had been in some very publicized disputes with Dan DiDio and DC editorial over the Executive Meddling his Justice League of America run and his Milestone Forever mini-series received. After he died, a one-shot tribute comic was published, and it contained a metafictional story where Static and Rocket discuss their creator's passing, and both state that now that he is dead, the same people who bullied Dwayne and made his job difficult would try to cash in and pretend that he was important to them.
A common running joke over at DC has been to mock the EEEEEXTREMEEE heroes who spun out of Bloodlines crossover from the 90's. For instance, the JLA/Hitmannote Hitman himself being a product of the crossover, yet far more successful than any of the other debuts crossover had The Flash claim that the Bloodlines heroes were a bunch of buffoons who nobody else in the superhero community wanted to team-up with. He then chalked up their infamously high mortality rate to a general lack of competence on their part. This happened as early as the months after the storyline ended. During the Knightfall storyline, Jean-Paul Valley encounters two of them in the main titles. He tells one of them to get out of Gotham or he's going to get killed and the other quickly leaves town after his adventure with them is over. Many of them end up getting killed by Superboy-Prime later on down the line.
The number of times that DC Comics and Marvel Comics superheroes have beaten on an Alternate Company Equivalent of their rival's characters are too numerous to count. It's been a tradition for the two companies to do light-hearted jabs at each other for over fifty years. Unfortunately, writers today tend to forget that.
This ad, funded by DC, is already a petty jab at Manga, but takes it a few steps further by saying "Robama (who is just Cyborg) wants you to buy American!" The overly patriotic tone doesn't help.
Wonder Woman gives a speech which is a pretty pointed takedown of the post-Flashpoint era.
”For years, our lives were infected with despair. An omnipotent force from another world manipulated us as part of some grand experiment. It stole away so much. Our sense of legacy, our connections and faith in ourselves...We believed its lies for too long. It let worse aspects of the multiverse hurt us. But it’s easy to see among my allies that its influence is gone. We’re free to embrace the best parts of ourselves. More than the multiverse has changed, we have too. Our lives have. We can move forward in exciting new ways. Start new chapters.”
A subtle one, but as Roy Harper walks off, he's shown tossing his trucker hat into a trash can. Considering the largely negative response to Roy's Post-Flashpoint depiction, which is where the hat came from, it can be read as a jab to his entire character treatment these last few years. At the very least, it's an obvious jab at the design choice. When the hat reappeared on a cover for Infinite Frontier #1, Joshua Williamson tweeted in response he simply didn't mention it to artist Mitch Gerads but assured everyone the hat's gone for good.
The fact that Bane in Arkham was one of the biggest casualties of A-Day could be interpreted as one last dig against Tom King's divisive run in Batman (Tom King).
Nightwing (Infinite Frontier) takes a nice dig at the whole "Ric Grayson" debacle when a thug tries to shoot a poor puppy in the head by having him say that if he did that, the dog would get amnesia and drive a cab and dogs should not drive.
A subtle one in The Flash (Infinite Frontier) #772, where Wally West goes looking for a job and finds it difficult to get hired because he has no computer skills. This seems like a dig at Heroes in Crisis, where he was depicted as suddenly having a previously unheard-of mastery of computers that surpassed Oracle.
from JSA created some backlash, because it was seen as a Take That, Critics! against everybody who criticized oversexualised costumes for superheroines, but this response from Jen Van Meter
